Travel Reads Queue, Page 7

The Sixth Sun: A prehistory of man’s next 4300 years
By Ted Barber
Over 25,000 years ago a humanoid race stumbled upon the earth. They were amazed that the humanoids on the earth were quite similar to them as their colonization efforts had never led them to an inhabited planet. Deciding to watch and wait they witnessed five natural disasters destroy most of the life on Earth, but each time mankind proved resilient.

Finally, the leaders of the home planet, Osiriat, decided that mankind could become an ally in space and decided to help him once he reached that point. They also noticed star signs/alignment patterns that would clue man into upcoming disasters if he would learn to read them. The fifth mission to Earth secretly built the pyramids of Egypt and Meso-America, but instead of reading the signs, man interpreted them as signs from the gods. Knowing mankind was doomed to disaster in the earth calendar year 2012, the leaders of the fifth mission decided to send their children on the sixth and final mission to earth to rebuild society, this time as a mixed race.

Lonely Planet’s 1000 Ultimate Sights
By Lonely Planet
Where do you start? Iconic buildings, awesome canyons, weird monuments, vast animal migrations, spooky dungeons and romantic vistas are just some of the man-made marvels and natural wonders in 1000 Ultimate Sights. Make your own list, hit the road, and start exploring the world’s most breathtaking sights. Natural phenomena, including the bubbling Pitch Lake of Trinidad; architectural masterpieces, including the ground-breaking Sagrada Familia in Spain; wildlife spectacles, including the Elephant Gathering of Sri Lanka; historic sights, such as the magnificent ruins at Volubilis; and more.

Seed
By Rob Ziegler
It’s the dawn of the 22nd century, and the world has fallen apart. Decades of war and resource depletion have toppled governments. The ecosystem has collapsed. A new dust bowl sweeps the American West. The United States has become a nation of migrants — starving masses of nomads roaming across wastelands and encamped outside government seed distribution warehouses.

In this new world, there is a new power: Satori. More than just a corporation, Satori is an intelligent, living city risen from the ruins of the heartland. She manufactures climate-resistant seed to feed humanity, and bio-engineers her own perfected castes of post-humans Designers, Advocates and Laborers. What remains of the US government now exists solely to distribute Satori product; a defeated American military doles out bar-coded, single-use seed to the nation’s hungry citizens.

Secret Service Agent Sienna Doss has watched her world collapse. Once an Army Ranger fighting wars across the globe, she now spends her days protecting glorified warlords and gangsters. As her country slides further into chaos, Doss feels her own life slipping into ruin.

When a Satori Designer goes rogue, Doss is tasked with hunting down the scientist-savant — a chance to break Satori’s stranglehold on seed production and undo its dominance. In a race against Satori’s genetically honed assassins, Doss’s best chance at success lies in an unlikely alliance with Brood — orphan, scavenger and small-time thief — scraping by on the fringes of the wasteland, whose young brother may possess the key to unlocking Satori’s power.

Cosmic Conspiracy: Psychic to the Rich and Famous
By Patricia McLaine
This is a memoir of the author’s life as a psychic in the world of the paranormal where she helped thousands of people, including various celebrities. Early on, Pattie McLaine had no clue about what Destiny had in store for her — no remembrance of a promise made to the Universe before she was born — to try to help people again and shed Light — as she had in many other lifetimes. Wonderful and mysterious events took place from the day she was born — revealed within the pages of this book. To Pattie, they amounted to what seemed to be a clever, capricious and cunning scheme — if not an Absolute Cosmic Conspiracy!

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Walt Disney World, 2012 Edition
By Doug Ingersoll
This edition of the annual guide to the florida resort features the most up-to-date ride ratings, prices, and hotel, park, and dining information. It also includes itineraries, planning cards, and maps.

Dead of Winter
By Brian Moreland
At a fort deep in the Ontario wilderness in 1878, a ghastly predator is attacking colonists and spreading a gruesome plague — his victims turn into ravenous cannibals with an unending hunger for human flesh. Inspector Tom Hatcher has faced a madman before, when he tracked down Montreal’s infamous Cannery Cannibal. But can even he stop the slaughter this time?

In Montreal exorcist Father Xavier visits an asylum where the Cannery Cannibal is imprisoned. But the killer who murdered thirteen women is more than just a madman who craves human meat. He is possessed by a shape-shifting demon. Inspector Hatcher and Father Xavier must unravel a mystery that has spanned centuries and confront a predator that has turned the frozen woods into a killing ground where evil has come to feed.

Chang Cheng: The Mystery Within
By Fernando Bascunan Jr.
Every year, thousands of tourists from around the globe visit the Great Chinese Wall but only two young boys have actually been inside and survived their way back. Is the world really prepared to know what they have seen, once they return? Chang Cheng, the Mystery Within is a fast-paced, fiction-adventure novel featuring two separate, very different, modern-day scenarios evolving at the same time, that are to eventually meet. A wide array of characters have been carefully selected and dramatized, making it easy for every reader to sympathize with their favorite one.

Archimedes’ Claw
By Theodore Morrison Homa, MD
The Epic Novel of one man’s journey back through time and his encounter with mankind’s greatest mystery. Driven for Truth, one man, uncovers a secret, hidden in time, that catapulted the Roman Empire to find Archimedes. Hunted by the government, haunted by his past, driven by passion, he must risk all. Travel back through the vortex of time and encounter mankind’s greatest mystery.

Forever and Again
By Melanie A Grice
Kayla Stevens is growing up learning about which people are her true friends. Kayla finds that there are stepping stones that will have to be taken to go on with a normal life. When the greatest dirt bike trickster Dale Constantine enters Kayla’s life she takes a turn away from the normal world and discovers that there is a world of the unknown that Dale has introduced to her and they both try to defy the obstacles that permit them to be together forever.

The Dead Celebrity Cookbook: A Resurrection of Recipes from More Than 145 Stars of Stage and Screen
By Frank Decaro
If you’ve ever fantasized about feasting on Frank Sinatra’s Barbecued Lamb, lunching on Lucille Ball’s “Chinese-y Thing,” diving ever-so-neatly into Joan Crawford’s Poached Salmon, or wrapping your lips around Rock Hudson’s cannoli – and really, who hasn’t? – hold on to your oven mitts!

In The Dead Celebrity Cookbook: A Resurrection of Recipes by 150 Stars of Stage and Screen, Frank DeCaro, best known for his six-and-a-half-year stint as the movie critic on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, collects hundreds of recipes passed on from legendary stars of stage and screen, proving that before there were celebrity chefs, there were celebrities who fancied themselves chefs.

Goodbye Milky Way – An Earth in Jeopardy Adventure
By Dan Makaon
Tom is a freelance project manager with a reputation for getting results for corporations and governments. But he’s never been up against a challenge like this.

The earthquake that triggered the Asian tsunami did more than kill 283,000 people. It caused a shift in the axial tilt of the Earth. But what could have caused such a powerful earthquake and its unusual tectonic activity? An eclectic group of scientists, calling themselves the Star-Slayer Team, calculates that the cause of the quake emanates from the depths of space, threatening all of mankind with extinction.

Tom leads a harrowing expedition to Antarctica and discovers an ancient secret that can help save mankind. He joins the Star-Slayer Team and leads massive and dangerous construction projects in Ecuador and on the Moon. Assisted by Aieda, a powerful and sophisticated computer, the team has only seven years to develop the mechanism that will save the Earth and the Moon. With Einstein-like intelligence, and even adopting a female persona, Aieda believes her new theory governing gravity and space-time will save humanity. But can she be trusted?

The Exorcist: 40th Anniversary Edition
By William Peter Blatty
The Exorcist changed popular culture forever. Now, William Peter Blatty’s groundbreaking story of faith and supernatural suspense – the runaway #1 bestseller that started it all – is reincarnated in this spectacular newly polished and rewritten 40th Anniversary Edition of the novel that burst through society’s seven seals and paved the way for the entire genre that followed it: the unforgettable The Exorcist.

All You Can Eat
By Richard Harlan Miller
Miller decided to write a book with vampires that never used the v-word. What he accomplished is a wry, subtly sinister novel with complex characters burdened by their pasts but given the chance to change. Darius is a wealthy immigrant living in a downtown Spokane condo, who meets Seattle women on the Internet and, when he really needs to, kills them.
He wants to live a quiet life, despite his dietary needs. He reads, he drinks wine, he watches the Nature Channel, and enjoys his sleepy Spokane refuge. Then his old friend Luke shows up. Hot on his trail is Dimitri, along with his assistant, Tomas, a computer-savvy teen with a twisted penchant for Nick at Nite sitcoms. Dimitri is a businessman. His business is feeding, and he’s planning a Rainbow People style gathering to lure a smorgasbord of young victims to Montana. He’s invited Darius and Luke, who doesn’t exactly have a sterling reputation. To make matters worse, Darius starts to fall for one of his intended victims.

Antiquitas Lost: The Last of the Shamalans
By Robert Louis Smith
This epic fantasy tale tells the story of a boy named Elliott, a lonesome kid with deformities on his hands and feet, who is uprooted from his home after his mother falls gravely ill. When they move to New Orleans so his grandfather can help care for her, Elliott learns that the old man’s eighteenth century mansion hides an ancient secret. While checking out some strange relics in the basement, Elliott strays through an ancient doorway into a tumultuous parallel world, full of bizarre creatures and warring races. He has stumbled into Pangrelor, the most ancient of all worlds and “mother to all the stars in the sky.” As he learns to navigate his new surroundings, he discovers wondrous abilities he never dreamed he possessed, and an abiding connection to the primitive, alien world that will forever change him.

The Boomer’s Guide to Story: A Search for Insight in Literature and Film
By Roemer McPhee
A tour of modern literature and film, looking for insights, ideas, and wisdom. Story-telling is chock-full of it: insights that are very serious, and others less so; some that are funny, and some that are quite poignant. So much effort and so much money have been spent in modern times to create story, that the end result is nothing less than a gold mine of vital ideas and insights, into humanity and life. The book is a collection of about 500 short essays, looking at about 300 modern stories. It is a book of ideas, and a celebration of literary art.